Sir William Forbes bart.

Scottish banker, founder of Sir William Forbes, James Hunter & Co. (1773). The bank or its partners appear in relation to several slave-owners and to estates [and the enslaved people attached to them], including Kenneth McPherson, Mary Verney Baroness Fermanagh, William Crooks of Tobago and Francis Brown Douglas (each of whom q.v.) and an as yet unidentified estate in Tobago (Sir William Forbes and the guardians of the infant of Sir James Hunter Blalr were shown as entering into a deed of covenant in 1788 and the latter's widow Lady Jean Hunter Blair was shown as conveying an estate on Tobago in 1799). The bank was also a creditor of William McDowall (q.v. under William McDowall III of Garthland). The nature of the bank's involvement is not clear in every case. In the instances of Kenneth McPherson and Mary Verney, the bank appears to have been a creditor; in those of Francis Brown Douglas and William Crooks it appears to have supplied conventional banking services rather than credit.

http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/Our-Group/our-heritage/our-history/bank-of-scotland/sir-william-forbes-james-hunter-and-company/ [accessed 31/05/2018]; National Library of Scotland, Ch. 12633-12707 'Legal documents relating to properties in the West Indies belonging to Alexander Ellice and his descendants', Ch. 12669 and 12676 http://manuscripts.nls.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/3440#components [accessed 31/05/2018]; Caribbeana Vol. III p. 19.